Cottage Industry: Tales from the Rural Laptop

Advanced Retreating

2011-11-26T12:38:00.000-08:00

This weekend I've submitted myself to a Meditation Retreat at a local Buddhist Centre, part of the tedious journey of personal development afflicting all middle youth like me.
It's not in fact much of a retreat for me, as I'm an outpatient, sleeping and eating at home and twiddling my thumbs during the generous tea breaks provided in the daily sessions. Twiddling ones thumbs in a Buddhist Centre in fact means eating a lot of the not especially healthy but vegetarian foods that seems to be favoured by the Buddhists, slouching on sofas and wandering in the mud of the lovely if unkempt grounds.

The apparatus of the North Wing Meditation Room is the same shrill, corporate blue of the local kerbside recycling boxes: we don't kneel or sit cross-legged, instead we sit on a conference-style chair with a matching blue foot cushion. Unfortunately this (relative) comfort leads to many of us novices sleeping instead of enjoying a 'journey out of our transparent skins made of light' and it is the distraction of the surrounding snoring that in fact is my meditative undoing. The aesthetics of the place fascinate me: a significant and vast mid 19th C mansion dotted with huge Buddha casts and paintings, each with its offering of packeted vegetarian foodstuffs in front. One could eat for a year from these - I wonder what happens to those rice cakes, the elderflower cordial, the halva when they are past the sell-by date? A resident lay Buddhist gives us a tour but it seems an idiotic question to ask.
Nevertheless it's a fascinating day: Fat is not a Buddhist issue: the monks' robes are - after all - one size fits all, and they freely admit that the banning of stimulants and alcohol leads to a love of chocolate and cake. Most course attendees are women of a certain age and a certain size, so we are all compatible. The state of the gardens attest to a certain lack of physical activity as the Buddhist norm - ah, the limited power of prayer when it comes to weeding.

Our main teaching monk resembles Lenny Henry, except that she has a natural gift for comedy. At one juncture in the soothing babble about business of mind and meditative objects she mentions her predilection for meditating on rhubarb, for the reason that it so repels her and thus offers her a suitably potent meditative focus.
I'm there more for the eyes-shut meditation than the Buddhist theory, which in any case seems only gently promoted (noone speaks above a loud whisper here). The exception is a singalong to a dreadful dirge written by the Centre's founder that punctuates the day. It reminds me of then Church tried to go cool in the late 70's (in some places - like Coniston - it got stuck there) - long hair, guitars, songs not hymns etc. The Founder Monk should have stuck to the day job of promoting world peace, for sure. All I recall is that this Buddhist version of 'All things bright and beautiful' includes the line 'My body is a wish fullfilling jewel' and that we were required to sing (most of us whisper in embarrasment) along with a backing tape at least twice before meditation. Clearly if you know the song by heart - as the monks did - this in itself becomes a kind of sung meditation, as they are no longer squinting at a laminated songsheet with typos, as we novices were. To them this song can become abstract, ritualistic, reassuringly timeless. Oddly this song is our only shared sound and I find myself wishing from some kind of group 'Ommmm' to drown out the snores, coughs, yawns and wheezes that so put me off.

Finally I'm reminded of a recent visit to the church I attended all through my youth, now with my frail mum in her wheelchair. Despite her illness and fading memory, and though it was nearly 25 years since the sung service was a weekly part of my life, we both sailed through the complex Episcopalian Communion bits and bobs, neither of us needing the booklet (which she can no longer read anyway). I can now see that this might be as close to meditation as I've ever been - the confident ritual, the beauty of the language and music, its familiarity cleansing the mind and even offering the body some relief in the gentle seesaw of kneeling and standing. My hand rested on my mother's shoulder as she repeated softly 'Take, eat, this my body, it is broken for you'. The power of these words melded with my intimate physical sense of her - somehow still robust - won't ever leave me.

A New Niche Blog

2011-01-20T09:09:00.000-08:00

I've a thing about other people's gardens, so here's somewhere I've started to write about them.
Do join me there if you too share this obscure interest.
http://otherpeoplesgardens.wordpress.com/

“I'm supposed to be indestructible”

2010-05-18T06:41:00.000-07:00

My father’s words down the phone-line, as he recuperates after a mini-stroke he has suffered at work in London. Mum – in hospital again herself for stroke-related bowel problems – speaks to him encouragingly via my mobile phone. She tries to gee him up, they share an innate and now rather comic stoicism despite being ex husband and wife - albeit the friendliest you could hope for.
Earlier on that day I made use of mum’s hospital stay by having a big and overdue clear out of her kitchen cupboard, a space that had become chaotic without her fastidious and regular attention. As my brother had pointed out a few months ago, this Mary-Poppins-bag of a place still contained the water bowl and collar of our family dog – dead for some twenty years; a rug beater in a house with no rugs; tennis equipment for a garden with no lawn and inexplicable oddities such as a single shelf bracket and meticulously-dated empty lightbulb boxes. Mum was no hoarder – even as a child I was unsettled by her unsentimental attitude to possessions that had passed their sell-by date – so this space was a surprisingly intimate view of the important minutieae of her life before she became ill.
I had to re-assess many useful things within, now with the acceptance that the bicycle clips would not be needed again, that she would never be able to water a houseplant now, nor mend a fuse. I even found the bag she must have used on the very day of her devastating stroke – complete with an array of cloths for her cleaning job, a tiny notebook recording hours worked, and a foil of nicotine-replacement gum.

As I sorted and re-catagorized the last of the neatly packed and labelled objects I found a frail narrative of her feelings on making the move to this house, after seperating from dad and living alone for the first time in her life: a personal alarm, a front-door spyhole and a number of large locks – all still boxed, unused.

A Kind of Normal

2010-02-12T05:43:00.000-08:00

Mum's stable. That's what I tell kindly, enquiring people who - like me, before - have usually heard only the good stories about stroke victims. The "After a few weeks he was up and about" and "When she's tired she walks with a slight limp" stories. After nearly a year visiting mum in the stroke unit, you almost get used to seeing the many younger and sicker stroke victims and their families. But outside, once these sufferers are back in their own homes, they are - of course - as invisible as they were before their strokes. This is one of the challenges for charities trying to raise awareness of this mysterious curse of a disease - the worse sufferers are behind closed doors, not in marathons or in celebrity magazines.

There are times when I wonder if my 'real' mother is simply on a long, long holiday. She'll be back soon, I hope. The lively wee chatterbox, always on her bicycle, nipping to the shops, has left behind this little, bloated and sleepy old person in her place - just to make us appreciate her more when she gets back home to us.
And then, at night as I stand by her bedside once the bustling carers have gone, she will fix me with the piercing gaze she has somehow developed since the stroke and we will speak about something intimate, something she has remembered from our past. Sometimes these conversations are deeper than anything we managed to find time for before. Now we are free from the workaday rituals of mother / daughter relations - sharing shopping, cooking, worrying - we have an odd, luxurious amount of time.

Sometimes I bring her a bit of chocolate in bed. The rules of our childhood have been unilaterally abolished by the stroke: There are no rules now - we can have sweets after bedtime, a CD on while she waits for the night carers; she's allowed to refuse to brush her teeth, yawn without covering her mouth and let the cat onto her bed.

Hugging a tub of flour

2008-04-18T11:20:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, to my great shock, my mother suffered from what seems to have been a stroke. After last week's visit to her in hospital, where she lies immobilised down one side, I returned to her empty house alone. On a whim, I decided to fill the vacuum by baking my sister - who I was seeing the next day - a birthday cake from us both.
I opened her kitchen cupboards, searching out ingredients, tins and the like. Mum had had her kitchen refitted recently so I wasn't too familiar with the new layout. I eventually found her flour shelf (Mum was always a keen baker) and then the old Tupperware tubs of carefully labelled flours that she'd had since I was a kid in the 70's.
I found the self-raising and stood for a long moment, hugging it very very hard.

Class in the classroom

2007-12-18T04:28:00.001-08:00

I was struck by the media's statement-of the-bleedingly obvious last week, about well-to-do and not-so-bright kids overtaking their more gifted peers from less affluent backgrounds.
When I was 8 or 9 years old, my class -like all others in Scottish primary schools at that time - had its fair share of 'wee nyaffs' as my soundly middle-class parents would call them. They'd have a more politically correct title now, but these were kids who lived 'up the back' (i.e in the housing estates at the back of Largs), often in single parent families, and with some quite serious behavior problems. With hindsight I now worry much more about the origins of their problems than I - or perhaps anyone at that time - did: There were a few very small boys who spent any free moment drawing and circulating obscene and anatomically accurate sexual drawings, for example. Much later, these young mens names would appear in the local paper linked to a small-town world of drugs and theft.

Anyhow, I remembered last week about a particular poetry recital competition I had entered for whilst at primary school. I am born on the same day as Scotland's national poet Robert Burns, and as a child had dreamt up a quasi-mystical relationship with the bard due to this concidence. (Virginia Woolf is also born on January 25th, but is/was not quite such an appealing icon)
Many of my fellow pupils competed in the memorising of tracts of Burns' poetry, which were to be performed in front of a stern and vaguely Dickensian panel of Scottish 'elocution teachers' as they were then known. It was a fraught and very competitive environment, given that few children of that age could memorise their full names and addresses let alone 8 verses of weird-sounding Scots poetry.

The school was to offer one star pupil forward to the next regional level of recitals, and as we were efficiently knocked out, a surprise contendor, I'll call him Ian McCabe, emerged. A tiny, under-nourished looking kid with a mum off the rails, he took the classroom floor aback with his energetic recital. Now, I can see Kenny could have grown up to be a Robert Carlyle-like actor, wiry, full of barely-surpressed anger.

As a child I had a prodigious memory (as evidenced by my Higher Maths qualification - didnt understand a single figure but could memorise and repeat all the neccessary data to pass with flying colours). I made it through to a final stand-off with Ian, where we both recited the same poem to the selection panel.
I don't remember the final event, or anything about how the decision was made, but I won the contest against Ian. And I am still haunted by the injustice of that decision, because even then I knew it was a done-deal before either of us stepped up to the podium - I felt it then, nearly thirty years ago, as I do now.

One flavour: Cornish

2007-11-12T02:58:00.000-08:00

I was brought up on the West Coast of Scotland, where we know a thing or two about ice-cream. An adopted dynasty of Italians, the Nardinis, had (and I believe still have) the monopoly on the ice-cream outlets of my hometown Largs, and as a people we were so keen on our ice-cream that we were as likely to be seen with a ’99-er’ cone (what has a half chocolate flake got to do with the number 99?!) in a January hailstorm as in the July sunshine.
Cornish ice-cream seemed to me – at that time – something that Mum bought as a cheap ‘standby’, and economical alternative to a (gasp) whole family-size carton of Nardinis, which was a massive, and rare, treat. The Cornish ice-cream was invariably bright yellow, very soft, and tasted like margarine. It came from the supermarket and in one flavour – Cornish – only.

My first trip to Cornwall recently has - you'll be glad to read - expanded my appreciation of the place many times over.
At first I couldn’t quite get over the fact that Penwith sounds like just a comic mispronunciation of Penrith. Of course Cornwall’s bizarre place names are part of its charm, as all the Nibthwaites, Crosthwaites, Slappersgates and Backbarrows are in the Lake District.

I travelled to this far-flung county at the kind invitation of the Newlyn Art Gallery to do a bit of R & D...
Cumbria and Cornwall: From afar they seem broadly comparable – tourist-dependent economy, a far distance from the UK’s main cities, a conservation and heritage-minded public profile, dying industries (farming and fishing). Both counties have their diehard supporters in rose-tinted spectacles (is there a Friends of Cornwall?)...

However, in Cornwall I was struck by how a surprising number of dynamic, ‘can do’ people we met had jettisoned any reliance on the public funders or officially sanctioned ways of doing things; or had found imaginative ways to get round legislation or rules: One guy – a fish merchant whose pilchard-salting factory was had up by EU health and safety police – had turned it into a ‘living museum’ and this apparently meant that his product wasn’t bound by the same red tape. He continued his line of business until the bottom fell out of the Italian pilchard market (I’m not kidding – it did, didn’t you hear?) and now the museum was being converted into flats as he plans to go off fishing with his mate Rick Stein.
Another retired civil servant was restoring a lugger (a traditional kind of local fishing boat) to working order so that it could actually be used as a viable fishing vessel, not a museum piece.

Everywhere we went people - whether they were fishermen or business entrepreneurs - lamented the crippling rules of politicians and the EU. Most got on with it anyway and sadly I think this little shred of fight is what generally marked them out from the Cumbrians I tend to meet. One exception here is Carol, an incomer who fairly recently took on a nearby holiday let / tearoom business. She runs the excellent tearoom on an honesty / ‘pay what you think is right’ donation system, even corralling visitors into digging her garden in return for tea. Naturally this goes down with the various authorities like a lead balloon. I hope they’re not, but I fear the days of her business are numbered.

Anyway back to Cornwall:
The Newlyn gallery staff were a tad – and rightly - preoccupied by an eruption of discontent amongst their membership: the gallery is still has a membership with a say, a precarious situation for any progressive contemporary art organisation operating in the vigorous demimonde of en plein air painting that is Cornwall. During our visit, wherever we went people voiced ill-informed and at times downright bigoted opinions about what was going on at the gallery, the mental health of the exhibiting artists, their own rightful ‘ownership’ of the space as tax payers (surely that’s like me saying that I have a say in who Kendal NHS trust admits for kidney dialysis? Me, I’m happy to trust the appointed...)

The director James is a really nice guy and certainly didn’t strike me as spoiling for a fight, but like most contemporary art curators, he is more used to public apathy than this.

I know a bit about this scenario – a long time ago I worked at Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop, a place with its fair share of revolting members. In fact, after my time there a successful coup was indeed orchestrated and various staff thrown out.
I asked my boyfriend Adam (he’s the director of Grizedale Arts) for a bit of advice: Grizedale had an – ahem – ‘tricky’ membership, when he joined seven years ago. But the contexts are so different: GA’s members were generally reliably apathetic to the new wave GA, though a few were nostalgic for the days of Ken Dodd in the Theatre in the Forest (they still call the office for his next gig) and Andy Goldsworthy in the leaf mould.

So Newlyn’s very vocal besmocked bourgoisie are a different kettle of fish as they clatter about the prom with their easels: I left wondering if a New Newlyn School of Contemporary Art Appreciation, Tolerance & Debate was needed.
Count me in as a speaker.

Va bene cosy? Italy again...

2007-10-15T05:58:00.000-07:00

We're just back from a week in Tuscany and Umbria, a country I lived in for a year back in the mid 90's but have seldom visited since, except for the odd art weekend at Shoreditch-by-the-Sea, aka the Venice Biennale. Back in 93/94 I lived at the peculiar and charmingly archaic institution of the British School at Rome(BSR), a boarding-school like base for all sorts of scholars with all sorts of Italian fascinations - from topiary to Roman Republican coins to cottaging in the nearby Borghese Gardens (I had my own share of less welcome sexual encounters with the exhibitionist men of Rome there too - in particular I recall a dismounted motorcyclist clad in waterproofs who didn't mind at all feeling the rain on one particular body part).

My affectionate memories from the BSR at that time are of lengthy dinners, midnight jaunts to the fabulous library and much simmering sexual tension - could have been our youth, the heat or the epic discussions on Piranesi's 'Great Drain' etching, who knows. I shared a studio with Roddy Thomson, whose art-prank, deeply satirical letters in collaboration with Colin Lowe (later published to some deserved acclaim as The Harang-Utang Letters) were just beginning to be devised. The arrival of Colin's drafts by post were a source of regular hysteria and a good reason to postpone getting down to anything like real work. Roddy is still a close friend, and I remember his final BSR show included a straight jacket made out of one of the School's bedspreads - it seemed to say it all ;-)....I know that the BSR has been upgraded significantly since my time - in fact the Sainsburys visited, chequebook in hand, whilst I was still there - maybe a recent BSR scholar can post a comment and let me know what's changed.

Anyway, despite not venturing as far as Rome, it was of great interest to return to a country which had played such a large part in the early part of my career, if not in the way it strictly speaking was intended to. This return was made all the more intriguing by my holiday reading of Tom McCarthy's great novel 'Remainder' and of Duncan McLaren's 'Looking for Enid'. The author of the former I met a few years back during the R & D of an aborted exhibition on re-enactment by curator Sarah Cook. The book is everything it promised to be at that early stage - a creepy and forensic study of the power of memory and trauma.
Duncan I have known for some years and he was a participant in our film 'Bata-ville: We are not afraid of the future', during which he met Kate, who features throughout his present investigation of Enid Blyton. Weirder still, Duncan - who has previously cast me as a re-incarnation of John Ruskin in his novella 'The Strangled Cry of the Writer in Residence' (don't ask) - includes the Bata-ville project in his book on Enid, albeit disguised as a trip in the name of Marcel Proust. Both books are mille-feuilles of memory, Duncan's a more robust (as you'd expect from something on the cheery and relentless Enid) confection than Tom's, but each prone to fissures through which glimpses of personal obsessions amid universal experiences can be seen.

My first impressions of Italy this time round were not great - the vast industrial sprawl between each exquisite hilltown seemed to merge each into the next; the roads were just as crazy but now even in towns the pedestrian seemed a rarity (except for for the enduring ice-cream eating flaneur's 'passigata'). It took a while for me to realise that, of course, 13 years ago I had probably arrived at most of these hilltowns by train, and been remorselessly carried along by the erudite enthusiasm of some BSR scholar so that by the time I was in front of the Piero Della Francesco in question, I was blind to anything but the aura of the treasure in front of me. I remember almost nothing of the journeys of these pilgrimages, apart from once when Nicholas May nearly drove into the car ahead in thick Umbrian fog. It can't be a coincidence that this excursion is not one for which I have find memories: Not only did we avoid near death on the autostrada, we also survived the vast Collezione Burri which was the destination of that particular trip - 5 ex-tobacco warehouses filled by the Italian painter before his death with his morbid abstracts. Bizarrely, we chanced upon the place again during this trip (whilst looking for the nearby folk art exhibition which we would have no doubt ignored as young art enthusiasts) - it felt smaller and more interesting, I nearly asked to see their old visitor book so I could be sure what I'd thought of it in 1993. Adam got the giggles over the ludicrously overblown guide text, and when the stern curator (God, what a job) declared that no they didnt have an available copy for us to take away, it definately wasn't for wont of a photocopier.

How different these 'grand tours' felt now, at once liberated by having our own set of wheels and enough cash for a fine lunch each day, and yet so much more complicated and filled with the distractions of maturity, the small portion that Adam and I have between us, that is.
Adam, this being his first visit to this, the motherload of art, was suitably awestruck at each new 14th century fresco we saw, whilst I dallied on the pews, trying to focus - futile, like I used to do before I gave up yoga. Each revisited masterpiece had, for me, the quality of a photograph or a reproduction - not from art history books, it's too long ago that I looked at any of those - but from my own past visits to see them whilst at the BSR. Tom's book resonated strongly in my mind, as I tried to flick backwards through my memory's card index, to re-experience the moment of their impact on me.

After a few days I began to recognise shreds of the old Italy I had been fond of: there are still old women everywhere, still wearing standard-issue flowery wrapover aprons over their huge chests, still carrying buckets (why? have they just cleaned the church?) or arched over a dusty vegetable bed. The infamous inefficiency of the country is still evident in queues of all nationalities all over railway stations, especially at the timetables which bizarrely are arranged by departure time instead of destination. There are still -magically- almost none of the usual high street suspects such as Starbucks or the Body Shop. The Italian teenagers still don't seem to rebel any further than ordering a chocolate wafer on top of their copettas of ice-cream.

Perhaps Duncan McLaren is trying to tell me something, next stop 'A la recherche de temps perdu' ?

Love shack bay-beee!

2007-08-06T04:09:00.001-07:00

Praise be!
Some 4 years since we snapped up what seemed to be the only affordable rural property in the Lake District National Park, we have finally obtained planning permission for what has become known as the "Love Shack" - to replace the mouldy-log-cabin-the-size-of-a-static-caravan, with possibly the LDNP's first bit of domestic contemporary architecture since the portcullis crashed down some time in the 1970's. I'll spare you the details of this torturous and expensive planning process here, suffice to pass on these words of wisdom to anyone thinking of following our lead:
- Don't use a consultant - the LDNPA moves in too 'mysterious' a way for anyone to be much good at dodging their bureaucracy
- Don't expect neighbours and parish councils to hold to my mum's adage 'If you've got nothing nice to say, say nothing" - even if you go out of your way to be inclusive, nimbyism thrives in the LDNP
- Don't give up - go to Appeal if neccessary and make it clear to the planners you intend to see your plans through at any cost

So, many thanks to our friends and families and colleagues who have survived our endless moaning during the process, and here's to the next few months of creating a tiny bit of the future in the Lake District!

Potty time

2007-07-13T12:43:00.000-07:00

Last week saw a visit from my three nieces who live in Glasgow, and hence many days and nights of me trying to recreate a temporary 1950's rural childhood for them as they looked on bemused - hiking, nature watches (owls and toads) and wholemeal bread. All things I hated as a child, but that's not the point of course.
Last night we broke out to Ambleside to see the latest Harry Potter film together, surprisingly watchable I thought except for the creepy thirty year old actors in school uniforms. I particularly enjoyed the none-too-subtle 21st c socio-cultural references, which were so leaden they made the Simpsons look like Kafka.
Most striking was the 'Ofsted' sub-plot whereby the 'Ministry' deems the Hogwarts magic school to be below standard and too focused on practical teaching and dominated by rather charismatic and arch staff who the kids love. This regime is replaced by a Ministry-approved Mrs Umbridge (dig the pink Jackie-O in a size 16 - costumes) who preaches theoretical-only magic (ie no wand-action), posts thousands of notices prohibiting absolutely everything and generally is torturous and snide. It's not a complex metaphor, and not unenjoyable either but I'd be interested to know how many kids see it as clearly as their parents must.

When in Barcelona

2007-06-25T02:21:00.000-07:00

I was raking around in my handbag for my always elusive mobile phone last week when out came an old sugar sachet from a place we'd eaten last Christmas in Barcelona. It reminded me that I always meant to post a recommendation for the place online:
El Convent, Jerusalem 3, 08001 Barcelona, T 933 171 052
(It' s one minute's walk from the back of the famous food market Mercat de Sant Josep/ La Boqueria on La Rambla de Sant Josep)
There we had a 3 course meal for around 8 Euros, delicious, traditional rustic food in a fascinating old building with friendly but low-key staff.
If you fancy it, read one of my earlier food rants here

Keep the faith

2007-06-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we held an Architecture Week event at a log cabin we bought in Cunsey in 2003. For 4 years we have been trying to replace the decrepit cabin with a small contemporary wood and glass house by Sutherland Hussey Architects. The design - on their website - has attracted everything from Sunday broadsheets to Grand Designs, and even if Adam wasn't related to one of them I'd find it hard to fault their credentials, and yet most meetings with the local planners end with them suggesting some design 'improvements' . Even the (failed) Appeal we endured on the first application ended with the Inspector making some 'helpful suggestions' and wondering why we wanted to bother with all this pretentious nonsense - why not just plonk another prefab down?
Thank God I'm not the architect, I'd have to be carried off shrieking, but being the 'client' is no easy ride either.
As anyone who has tried to engage with the Lake District National Park planners will tell you, they're not a bunch to embrace contemporary architecture readily, being much keener on slate-clad walls, cute pitch roofs (Brazilian slate since ours is too expensive, is fine tho') and faux-heritage trimmings. Being a very special National Park they can largely ignore the shift in national planning policy towards 'greening' architecture and accepting that Modernism is here to stay and actually rather nice to live in. Instead we see endless, poorly built perpetuations of Lilliput Lane / Beatrix Potter style houses - Disneyland actually does them better, using better building techniques and attention to detail.

Anyway, back to the event. An amazing 30+ people found our tiny, remote site and an informal support group for self-builders and lovers of good architecture, emerged over cups of tea. After years of neighbour trouble and planning friction, it was genuinely moving to meet like-minded people who loved the design and were willing us to succeed and not give up! I had heard of urban Architecture Week events with noone attending, so was amazed to find that in the heart of what seems the most conservative place in England, there is a healthy group of dissenters.
Let's hope we can keep the faith long enough to do everyone proud and build the darned thing.

You can read Adam's blog about the eventhere.

Catsnap

2007-06-20T15:02:00.000-07:00

One of Adam's conditions placed on the acquisition of cats here at Lawson Park is that they match: Unsurprising for a man with more collections than hairs in his beard.
Since adopting feline no. 2 - the lavishly friendly but rather plain Maurice (named after Adam's grandmother's revolting pug) - I have periodically managed to gather photographic evidence of his matching feline no. 1 - the exquisite but aloof Tomas Bata the Fourth.

I think that's Hungarian for 'rearing stallions'

2007-04-10T08:54:00.000-07:00

It's not often the rural laptop gets out and remembers to blog about it afterwards (is that a sign of a good or a bad night out?!). But in London recently during the final - and expensive (£300 an hour for a colourist, ahem) - throes of my film Living with the Tudors I managed a couple of how shall we say, diverse, cultural experiences:

I liked the shortswearing HungarianAgaskodo Teliverek so much at their Resonance FM fundraiser so much, I bought their CD. If "sounding something like a cross between Captain Beefheart, Public Enemy & Venetian Snares" sounds good you you can find the duo online here.

Asparagus, the opera, an art performance I went to with Jet, was altogether weirder. A packed venue of art vermin, men in bad costume, music (good) by (I think) Les georges leningrad - but I didnt get it. I met Jonathan Griffin afterwards, reviewing it for Frieze (poor guy) who confirmed my suspicions that it might be a reenactment of some kind but also seemed bemused. Looking for online links to offer you I fail to find anything, if it wasn't for this picture I took I'd begin to doubt my own sanity.

This is Easter food

2007-04-10T07:59:00.000-07:00

Mercifully far from M&S and their attempted monopoly on Easter edibles, we plough a different furrow up here:
1.
A pudding which should possibly be illegal , that's how calorific and delicious it is, is Sussex Pond Pudding , so rich I have only made it once before, for my appreciative friends Ben & Freddie. It's nuts-sounding - a ye olde steamed lump with a whole lemon in the middle - a WHOLE LEMON!
My recipe is Elizabeth David's but Waitrose has a good one online too here though it recommends clotted cream to serve - I mean, are they trying to get sued?!
2.
To offset such indulgence, I prepare a double bento box of vegan Japanese food one evening:
In the middle is some slices of carrot pickled in nuka - an ancient Japanese pickling technique mixing rice bran and salt, garlic and seaweed. Like a good bread culture, this mixture lives indefinately as long as you stir it daily. This resulted in a recent holiday in France for the nuka, as our absence from home for 5 days would have meant certain death...

Mr Potter's legacy

2007-04-10T07:43:00.000-07:00

'Miss Potter' the movie is enjoying a seemingly limitless run in local cinemas here - when we saw it the soundtrack was barely audible under the locals screeching 'That's NEVER the real Hill Top!" and "I've never seen it as sunny as that!". I wonder if 'Brokeback Mountain' had the same popularity in Alberta, Canada or 'Cape Fear' thereabouts....

Whilst the locals are numbly relishing the image of a de- touristified Lake District populated by actual farmers and reasonably priced property , we find ourselves on the receiving end of a solicitors letter from none other than the company of one Mr Heelis, aka Mr Beatrix Potter. Yes, incredibly, the firm has endured as one of the major legal players locally, and a narky neighbour of ours has commissioned them to wrangle over a boundary issue with us.
Mr Potter's man meets us near the disputed boundary, and brusquely sets out his stall - no, his clients don't own this track, but yes, they'd rather we didn't obstruct it; no, his clents can't technically stop us from parking there but yes, they'd rather we didn't, etc etc.

Isn't it heart-warming to know that the great authoress' legacy is not restricted to chubby rabbits?

Gratuitous cat picture

2006-10-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

Maurice guards a vast porcini harvest from this summer. Is that a handle-bar moustache?

I'm liking Ireland

2006-10-26T06:42:00.000-07:00

It kind of makes you ask what went wrong with Scotland (where I was brought up). Or even England, except I can’t speak for the rest of the country from my willing encarceration in the theme-park of the Lake District.
In small-town Ireland there are highstreets full of independent shops - though this one in Clifden does have the oddest strawberries I have ever seen (the Body Shop is relegated to a small stand in a local pharmacy). Even very small towns like Ennis in County Clare, where the conference we’re at is, seem to still support bookshops of three varieties (charity, cheap and cheerful, and academic); diverse eateries serving everything from smoothies to Irish stew; real toy shops (I mean, I haven’t seen one of those since the 1970’s - I don’t count motorway-side Toys R Us) and numerous small butchers (enticingly called victuallers here). Ireland seems to be full of people of all nationalities living, working and studying, and not just in the cities.

Yes there are pubs and tat-shops aimed at tourists, too much Enya-esque flowing 'n fringed clothing on sale, and so much Celtic font-use in the signage you can at times feel like you have entered a Tolkien theme-park. But somehow the feeling of towns inhabited by and run for the benefit of busy locals remains. A bit like provincial France maybe, the visitor is welcomed but not pandered to.

Ireland has so many pale people like me that the clothes boutiques accomodate this by stocking flattering colours for the milky-skinned. The ubiquitous white trash fake tan of most of the UK isn’t present here except in Dublin – as in Japan where I was earlier this year – being pale doesn’t imply a shameful lack of disposable income. Speaking of disposable income I’ve been particularly struck by the massive new homes that line the busy roads connecting Ireland’s towns. At first these Gracelands-like gin palaces horrified me with their bald, curtain-less splendour, windows gleaming out onto freshly-laid roadside lawns the size of football pitches. Stone and stucco detailing, triple garages and porticos combine in infinite variations but – interestingly - always excluding any reference to modernism. However after a few days of awe I’m starting to find them rather cool – especially as they even extend into areas of true wilderness, with rock, gorse and sky reflected in their double height UPC windows.

Oh, (and I'm sure I can hear howls of derision from RSPCA affilated readers), and I rather liked that Ireland still has stray cats, not loads (a la Greque) but just a few picturesque and very healthy-looking ones. The bordering on the bizarre fanaticism of UK cat charities for neutering has eliminated these even in the countryside in England ...

Random acts of kindness

2006-07-10T22:22:00.000-07:00

We have just returned from three weeks shooting our latest film,'Living with the Tudors' in rural Suffolk. It's been an epic experience, and though the shoot is over I will for some time remain in the peculiar aftermath of intense documentary filming - a state of heightened sensibility to, and awe of - human experience and survival. Despite the almost complete exhaustion of my emotional resources, as I watch people at the train station or eating lunch, I am scrutinising them for the tiniest perceptible scars of their life stories - perhaps an awkward gait, a shrill laugh or a hesitant look.
Reminding me of the day after I lost my virginity, I expect everyone else to detect this seismic shift in my sensibilities in my external appearance. Of course, they don't. In the supermarket, people examine the produce as usual, perhaps seeing me in their peripheral vision as just another tired-looking shopper.
One particular encounter reminds me of what can happen in this state of mind:
On the way home from shooting our first film Bata-ville I remained in the retro travel hostess uniform I wore throughout the film as I had no time to change. Arriving very late at Oxenholme Lake District train station, it was dark, windswept and raining heavily. I had practically slipped into a coma en route I had been so tired, and now I had to drive the next hour home myself. I was feeling unsociable and introspective. Then, I saw a young black woman with a large suitcase looking hesitantly at the empty taxi rank, and I felt utterly compelled to ask her if I could help. She seemed unphased by my appearance or my cluttered car and I offered her a lift to the nearby town Windermere, where she had a job in a care home. It was only as we reached the town's main road she admitted she did not have the address written down, or any idea where the building was. Once more, going utterly against what would have been my habitually irritable response to this spiral of chaos, I felt simply sorry for this woman and we continued to drive through deserted streets for another hour until the vast Victorian pile loomed into view. On offloading her case, my passenger reached into her handbag and asked how much she owed me for the lift. I explained that really I had been going her way anyway.
Today, rushing to buy some food at the supermarket, I impatiently freed up my trolley with a pound coin and noticed in the corner of my eye a very stooped old lady in the next row of trolleys. She was being very discreet, but she was clearly utterly baffled by how the coin system worked. I watched her struggling patiently and proudly for a little while, as other shoppers wrenched away neighbouring trolleys. Then - of course - I went and helped her.

My fledglings have left the nest

2006-04-30T13:15:00.000-07:00

I recently left academia after a decade in part-time fine art lecturing. Like many life-long art lecturers slash artists who use their teaching to pay the bills, I had thought at best I'd last seven and was surprised to make it past this itch.

In fact I changed jobs after seven years, and left UCE Birmingham to work closer to home at St Martin's College (SMC) in Lancaster. The move was a wrench - I had made great friends at UCE, had - in some ways - grown up there. But in the last few years, a number of colleagues had died prematurely, after long illnesses, and in some ways the time felt right to move on. My new job promised a new course, built to the specifications that myself and another newly appointed colleague then spent several years crafting. There were many good times earlier on, and I learnt - at first anyway - to work a comfortable 8 hour day instead of UCE's unusual 11 hour one.

On my interview day, I toured the archaic and empty Apple Mac Suite and viewed the grimey Uglow-esque paintings in the Art studios with a band of fellow interviewees (one of whom described the job as a 'poisoned chalice' I recall). I wondered if there were any young people even on the course, it all seemed to careful and polite. But I really liked the staff I met, and I was excited about moving away from the safe haven of UCE and its largely middle-class intake. I remember now how long I took to accept the post when I was offered it - something in me knew I was in for a steep uphill climb. To cut a very long and arduous story short, the institution - very sadly - proved to be as backward as it had first appeared. Tens of thousands of pounds were wasted by the college fulfilling half our list of IT prerequisites, which would not function without the other half. The one half languished inoperative in cupboards and my angry and unreplied to emails built up.

Our course was finally aborted at a very late stage, with very little warning and no debriefing from management. I was disgusted, and no matter how fond I was of my colleagues by then, and how much good I felt sure I was doing the students, I could not remain working for management I had so little respect for. It's a very ordinary tale in academia....

Fast-forward then, till Friday night, when a small, diverse group of my favourite ex-students (I can say that now I'm not their lecturer any more!) hold a show 'The 9lb project' in the College gallery which I had helped design as part of my job at SMC. They had had the gumption to turnaround their usually lacklustre work placement module and organise the first real gallery show SMC had had outside of degree show every June. As I drove there, I had the usual mixed expectations of a student show. And I still was feeling considerable guilt for leaving them - as I saw it - at the mercy of a largely unsympathetic (or maybe uncomprehending) course team. I knew I had probably been the only lecturer who had really pushed their buttons, and that I had left them now. This probably sounds like I'm taking it all to seriously, but hey - this is how it goes in the post-partum mind.

These students were an almost crazily diverse group, but they'd put on - with our very committed technician Stephen Bentley as their institutional support - an incredibly fresh exhibition of energetic, articulate work. I loved it. It wasn't the best-installed show on earth, but I was just thrilled to see a decent turnout of young gallery-goers, some fine skate-boarding, some Paul McCarthy-seque gutsy performance (see image) and no politeness on the walls. It was as if finally some young artists had entered the building. Predictably there were no senior SMC staff in attendance (in some way just as well seeing as how hazardous the pissed skateboarding was getting) but I'm certain the exhibitors didn't give a shit. They all seemed elated, and I remembered how exciting shows are when you start out. I even remember Nina throwing up regularly before them - that's how exciting they were.

As I was getting ready to leave some of my former students began to lament my departure. One of the exhibitors challenged me "You said in drawing class you'd be really impressed if someone did a full-length self portrait - I did! You said you'd be impressed if someone did a bit of performance - tonight I did! What's you're next challenge !? - Bring it on!!!"
I sped home on the M6, the route suffused by warm early summer light and skipping through my iPod. I realised that for the first time in a long time I felt good about what I had left, and certain that they'd all be absolutely fine without me.

Paid to smile

2006-04-12T15:12:00.000-07:00

I just enjoyed a pre-Easter minibreak in North Yorkshire, mainly to relieve the inevitable pressure valve of impending Easter in the Lake District, which is an endurance test of tourists driving, picnicking in your garden and allowing their dogs to chase your cats. I used my favourite guidebook to choose ur destination: Alistair Sawday, which Nina and I somehow discovered a few years ago when R & D-ing our Almanac project. It provided us with a series of characterful B & B's owned by characterful people who didn't - like us, but unlike the Tourist Board - overrate ensuite bathroom, central heating, or proximity to local attractions.
Alistair S once again led us to an appealling eccentric venue, in a little fishing village 'much beloved by artists' (I did like it, it's true) weirdly close to Middlesborough (no postcards available of that sadly) - a restaurant with rooms, famed for seafood. The room was nice - ensuite bath not shower (I approve) with rather odd but compelling view of sheer cliff face with gulls /wallflowers, and a cupboard full of DVDs to compensate for the crap TV reception. The energetic cook and co- owner sprinted up the stairs ahead of us, just the right side of warm and informal - a very hard thing to get right in the 'hospitality trade'. Then, downstairs he introduced us to his partner, who was pouring another guest a lovely looking Kir Royale.
She looked up fleetingly, and flashed a momentary and utterly superficial grin before returning to her evening of service. Now, as a 'directors wife' I recognise the ennui of the bored hostess more easily than most - it happens to us all at one time or another that you find yourself bored to death by somebody important to your partners work. Luckily Grizedale Arts generally delivers a gripping guest - Ken Russell for example - so this is rare. Nevertheless, this woman was clearly suffering from the syndrome badly. At dinner, she made sure to book us in to a strict 15 minute breakfast slot that rather belied the image of a 'relaxed getaway'.
Later that evening Mrs Happy described to some 'regulars' - well within earshot of us - her and her chef / host husband's recent 2 week break in California. "Hmmm, nice, but it was the first holiday we'd had since we started this place in 2003...". The regulars sympathised quietly, not quite sure what she was trying to say.
I felt sorry for her, but then I remembered we were paying them 200 quid. She was paid to smile and had somehow forgotten how to make this at least look sincere.
(Music reference in title for pop-pickers: The Lemonheads)

Looks familiar

2006-04-09T03:12:00.000-07:00

I have recently left academia after a decade (the reasoning perhaps being a subject of a future blog entry...), and taken a freelance job leading Grizedale Arts 'Creative Egremont' programme - a year long public art project in the largely-unknown West Cumbrian town of Egremont, which sits cheek-by-jowl with Sellafield Nuclear Power Station.
My drive to the town takes me out of the condensed hyper-landscape of the Lake District across a spectacular stretch of moorland near Broughton (pictured). I'm told that at certain times of the day this empty road is filled with boy-racers escaping from their shifts at Sellafield, though I haven't yet experienced this.
What struck me when I first took this route was its familiarity. At first I put this down to its resemblance to my homeland Scotland, and also to the post-academic euphoria of the open road. Now, however, I have become convinced that this sinewy road and its 360 degree panorama is in fact the backdrop for the countless car commercials that bombard us from billboards (ok, not here in the National Park where such hordings are absolutely verboten...), sunday supplements and TV.
Is there no escaping the iconic landscape in this part of the world?

I love America and America loves me

2006-03-19T12:14:00.000-08:00

(For non-art readers please Google ‘Beuys, Joseph’ right now)
I don’t think I saw so much as a plain old hound dog let alone a cayote on my recent trip to the ‘alternative’ bit of Texas – Austin - to screen our film ‘Bata-ville’ for the first time on US shores.
The Austin creatures I encountered in the ubercool SXSW Festival were altogether more exotic and strange to my eyes: Grown women screaming ‘Neat shoes!’ at me without alcohol or irony; a bronzed expat Johnny-Lydon-esque cockney guitarist jamming in a thrift store; people so large and immobile that when stationary they could be mistaken for one of those inflatable armchairs.
Film festivals: Tedious though it is to have to summarise one’s film to 75 different people a night, this is pleasingly facilitated by being whisked smoothly through 3 margarita-filled parties a night by friendly, interested and interesting strangers. I don’t get to party much up my mountain, so I like to take big bites of this kind of thing when I can.
During SXSW (music, film & interactive) the city becomes an international but compact circuit for bands, film-makers and geeks – ideal for the time-starved and jet-lagged, the programmes are stimulating but not epic so long as you know what you like. The atmosphere is like a much cooler (but warmer if you know what I mean) Edinburgh Festival for the young(ish) and hip – laidback, a little flirty, and (speaking about the films anyway) eccentric.....

Like many Britons I am ambivalent about America and Americans, though until last week I had never ventured further than New York City (which sees itself as a fashionable suburb of a farflung European city). It takes around 2 days to acclimatise to the relentless friendliness and (we’re more alike than we think) inability to give a straight answer. (I lost count of the times I heard ‘Well ma’am, I cannot give you a precise answer to your query at this time, however....’ instead of “I don’t know”).
And it’s hard to trust a nation whose addiction to fast food compromises almost every waking experience – even arthouse cinemas are filled with a rustling, snacking mob.
And yet there is so much to delight in – at least in Austin: sequins and neon gleefully adorn most stores as if a 7 year old girl has been given the shopfitting contract; potplant cacti growing as rampant and wild on wasteground as foxgloves do here; the literally countless re-interpretations (read ‘refoldings’) of the burrito; the dusk pet-shop cacophony of the vast flocks of grackle birds (spelling?!) roosting in the trees and competing with the live bands everywhere,

Ethno/erotophile

2006-03-19T12:07:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of my younger brother’s merciful replenishment of my iPod I have belatedly discovered the Scottish band Arab Strap. They’d previously only been known to me via occasional John Peel mentions and when at a film-making masterclass recently the director Richard Jobson said he’d made a music video for them. (Lucky sod, I say).
I don’t know anything about the band but I’m loving the tracks from The Last Romance album. Come Round and Love Me had the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end, which is beyond rare for a cynic like me. The plain instrumentation and mundane eroticism of the lyric intertwine – like a lot of good music - to remind me of a past I don’t know I was nostalgic for: lie-ins in student flats, hangovers and aimless lust.
I am a Scot who has been an expat for 15 years, and perhaps most startling for me is the (re?) discovery of the eroticism of the Scottish male voice in Arab Strap. It’s well over a decade since I had anything erotic to do with a Scotsman, and I’m pretty sure that over that decade I wasn’t conscious of the accent’s specific allure. But something weirdly bubbles up in my subconscious when I listen to this album: I’m sure a psychoanalyst would have a field day on where this is coming from – dad, brothers, my first boyfriend, teacher/s – all vying for space in my ever more crowded psyche.
I’ll eagerly await the invitation to make Arab Strap’ next video and get some of this out....

Radical horticulture

2006-02-04T20:39:00.000-08:00

Notable by its absence to date from this blog is my fanatical obsession with gardening, given full reign since my move to the middle of nowhere four years ago from Peckham, where I endured a tiny patch dominated by overzealous plum trees and the neighbour's rottweillers.
To be fair, my garden has its own website, that's how big it is - at www.lawsonpark.org.uk - which I try to maintain in the same relaxed way as the garden itself (a duff link = a dandelion in a corner in this analogy).
Anyway, back to the point - I am truly saddened by the death recently of Christopher Lloyd, arguably Britain's most influential gardener of the 20th century. He lived a privileged bachelor life in his folks' place, Great Dixter in Sussex, and dedicated himself and his resources to his colourful, inspired, exprimental garden there. I was lucky enough to visit last summer, and though many of his gleeful planting experiments can't be replicated up my cold mountain, it was an inspiring day, despite the crowds.

I was particularly struck by his 'still lifes' of potted, clashing plants of both refined and mongrel origins, dotted about (see top image) - and reminded of the work of the noted and IMHO much under-rated (move over Grayson, please) ceramicist Richard Slee. Both men share a mischievious and knowing disregard and manipulation of taste and cliche in their oeuvre. From Richard's fabulous website at www.richardslee.com I have borrowed these pics to hopefully prove my point.

With very different artistic vocabularies, both cock a snook at the bourgois sensibilities of the art or garden-lover, who at first glance sees a covetable 'ornament' and (hopefully) at second glance, a complex codefied challenge.

A highlight of any Dixter visit is the house tour, a not because of the artefacts within the impressive and ancient building (as I understand, transported there bit by bit by Christopher's father). Ours was led by the most entertaining guide never to work for a publicly-funded organisation. A Joyce-Grenfell-a-like, willowy, and oddly ageless lady lead the way with the most hilarious and laconic monologue throughout, interspersed with the kind of almost supernatural authority and understatement that English spinsters were once famed and feared for. Whilst facing the opposite way and commentating on a medieval window, her speech would fluidly transform into a brief but severe reprimant to the a naughty 9 yr old who at that very point was leaning on a rare and valuable antique chair behind her. When faced with explaining some particularly wacky contemporary furniture in CL's office, a deep - and deeply disapproving yet oddly warm sigh preceded her "Christopher Lloyd has been shopping AGAIN..."

LLoyd's prolific writing is justly esteemed too, and I particularly enjoyed it when I was writing for a shortlived garden magazine ' The Northern Garden' a few years ago. Pithy and erudite yet always amusing, I particularly enjoyed reading of his ambivalence to the 'paying public' in his garden. Apparently, when on all fours weeding on an open day (his was a high-maintenance garden, low-maintenance according to him being for the 'uninterested') inevitably a visitor would ask the name of a particular plant. Without turning round or looking up his response would be to ask if the enquirer had a pen and paper ready. "But I'll remember it!' the poor visitor would persist "No, you won't, so it's simply a waste of both of our time me telling you!"
My kind of guy.

Would the Cumbrian film-makers at the back please stand up

2006-01-05T04:48:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to you. I have a good feeling about 2006, my first venture way from home since festive hibernation having been surprisingly good:

Pulling up at the venue for the Cumbrian Film-maker's Network inaugeral 2006 screening, my heart sank somewhat. The bar, a dim 'aluminium-chairs-blond-wood' type of place, had stopped doing food at 6pm due to lack of customers, and we were forced back into Kendal's hellish one-way system to find fish and chips.
However, on returning later with my DVD of my short film 'Welcome To' there was a pretty good crowd, though I was surprised to see mainly the over-50s, many blokes, and very few of what you might guess were filmmakers wanting to network....Jo Hutton, the organiser, is an enterprising young woman who hosts the event too.
Debate was modest but the atmosphere warm, and I squeezed in the trailer for 'Bata-ville' and plugged its next screening at the local-ish Keswick Film Festival (Feb. 19th FYI).
Along with my film there were a number of others procured on the whole through the local screen agency North West Vision. They were kind of slick but not my thing at all. Most of my attention was spent noting the funders logos at the end for future reference.

The highlight was Edward Acland, a local ex-councilor, 'creative soul' (his words) and eco-zealot who had done an exhibition at the Brewery Arts Centre in 2004. The show ("It was an enormous project, it took over a week!" he said. i didn't want to tell him how long most of my projects take...) included a short autobiographical film which was both elegiac and a call to arms against the impending global envornmental crisis. A guy from the world of corporate video had produced the film, which was technically very competent but formally very pedestrian. What made the film so compelling was the charisma and succinctness of Acland's narration, as he told how he had abandoned his dayjob at the Council and now acknowledged the impossibility of radical green politics ever reaching 'the establishment'. Miraculously un-bitter anyway, he spoke passionately about his concerns for the planet's future, in a seductive language which was tinged with the more predictable hippy-dom but which also was energised with an impatience to find new ways to influence people's behavior and awareness of green issues.

Many of my friends would be surprised to hear that I have been a member of Greenpeace since I was 15. I don't wear that side of myself on my sleeve despite my passion for horticulture and early consumption of organic foods (seeking them out when at art college, you had to buy a bag of what was mostly mud from a dingy shop staffed by some very strange people). Naturally, since moving to the middle of nowhere, the dynamic of nature has gradually taken on more significance for me, as I connect again to my childhood weekends and holidays romping on the Arran hillsides until dusk. In many ways I find the culture of the Lake District largely stagnant / static, and so my theory is that this makes you finely attuned to the very dynamic natural world, and by extension more committed to its sustainance. (Note, I don't say 'protection' a la Lake District National Park Authority).
And so I am always delighted and suprised to find people here like Edward, who manage to actually apply what many would deem hopeless idealism to his life and work - maybe this in turn produces culture?

Sportswear - it's really important

2005-12-16T07:11:00.000-08:00

I must be getting on. I have a lot more time for Madonna than I used to. I gladly buy into the whole radical older mum of 2 struts her stuff regardless of 21st century social norms. I admire someone who samples the wondrous Abba, possibly the biggest influence on my life between 4 and 6 years old.
But when I saw the grand dame on telly a few weeks ago being interviewed by a sycophantic youngster, she made the mistake of trying to articulate something else that obsessed me between 4 and 6 years old - "Where do ideas come from?"
Madonna, following in the footsteps of so many cultural colossi, cited the need to "find my muse" for every new reincarnation of herself. And this year's muse was - the interviewer enquired...?
"Leotards" she answered, thoughtfully.

Lukewarm Radiator

2005-12-08T13:04:00.000-08:00

I hadn’t been out of the Lake District for about a month before travelling last weekend to speak at the Radiator Festival, an art & new media wingding in Nottingham, an idiosyncratic kind of town slash small city, where they have things called the Household Bank and a Leprosy Mission. I think Boots might have started there too (any pharmaceutical relationship to the Mission I wonder). I was looking forward to seeing my friend and one-time mentee Jeanie Finlay who lives there, an artist and film-maker who – like the ideal mentee she was – has surpassed her mentor’s meagre personal and professional achievements in every field. She even speaks Japanese.

I’m something of an alumni of the Radiator festival, having spoken at its first incarnation in 2000. As I recall, a handful of people – almost all working at the event – attended my gig, directly after which the organiser handed me a cheque for £350. Whilst I was still on the stage. I don’t think I have ever been paid more, or more rapidly for any presentation. I liked it.
Arriving at one of the Festival’s main venues, Broadway, after some phenomenally slow service at the town’s Wagamama noodle joint (and remember I’m speaking as someone who endures Lake District speed service on a regular basis) , I joined a late ‘remote’ talk by a commissioned artist. A handful of people, mostly working for the event, clustered around a small computer monitor into which one was typing in an online chat. The roar and fun of the downstairs bar was deafening, and a few semi-detached audience members shared beers at the back of this upstairs ‘space’ – one of those semi-circulatory, transitory rooms which neither invite relaxation or facilitate communication or interaction. I sneaked onto a seat and looked across at the curator Sarah Cook (the chair for our next day’s panel) who I had arranged to meet there, trying to ascertain her level of commitment to the event.

I found myself instantly wondering if anyone from the event had even spoken to anyone in the bar or foyer downstairs about it – announced it I mean, when it was starting, what it was, why they should come? The security guy on the stairs had shrugged when I had asked him what was going on up there. Yes, it’s hard to walk into a crowded room of drinkers and endure a few nanoseconds of embarrassment. Yes a few twats would probably shout at you as you struggle to be heard over the drinking, as you struggle to make ‘moving-upstairs-to-engage-in-an-online-chat-on-a-small-screen-with-some-obscure-foreign-artist-you’ve-not-hear-of ‘ actually sound inviting. But isn’t it the job of a festival like this to try and get new audiences.? Or just any audiences?
I am reminded of the late and much-missed Robert Woof (see my eulogy below), director of the Wordsworth Trust - someone who unfailingly rang you up a few hours before the Trust’s monthly poetry events to personally invite you to attend. You invariably did. As marketing gets, it doesn’t get much more targetted and God knows he must had dreaded doing it some days – I mean, this guy was the Director, not the administrator, he had other stuff to do. But he knew that how to get people in to events – at least outside of the safe haven of London – using a combination of guilt-tripping, manipulation of the English’s fear of embarassment and unwillingness to say no, and a sympathetic acknowledgement that you probably hadn’t read the brochure as closely as you might have.
Anyway, in moments Sarah and I had escaped to the roaring bar and fortunately quickly engaged in an – as ever with Sarah –widerangingly enjoyable but techno-flavoured discussion that included Sarah’s patient responses to:
“Is it just me, or does there seem to be a lot of that academic dance and technology stuff programmed here?”
“Is it just me, or is Open Source for artists really problematic – I mean, you’re not allowed any images on Open Mute’s Omweb thingy....”
“Is it just me, or is this a very small audience?”

You can see that after 4 weeks up my mountain, the Rural Laptop seeks affirmation for her distantly paranoid observations of the cultural world from afar.

How do you cry online?

2005-11-12T09:43:00.000-08:00

This is one of questions, that in the blur of the funeral of my friend Marie Nally, I starkly remember. It was part of a brief eulogy that had been emailed, and someone - I think it was my friend and work partner Nina - read it out in the service, shaking with the A4 in her hand. Marie had a strong online network of friends, chiefly though her engagement in the breast cancer cause (the disease that took her life), for which she paved the way for so much of todays' Internet support and discussion.
It's still a question of the utmost poignancy and loneliness of grief, articulate of the fundamental limits of our expression: technological limits, emotional limits.

Last week came the news of the death - also from cancer - of Robert Woof. Robert was the director of the Wordsworth Trust in nearby Grasmere, and an irreplaceable and inspiring friend to my partner Adam and I. Robert was a man of enormous intellect, but rarely for an academic, his erudition was woven into a vast net which - at lightning speed - would have him making the most inspirational cross-references. Even for much younger guests - as often the Grizedale artists we have with us are - an evening with Robert was a totoally engaging cross-cultural tour at breakneck speed.

Robert is pictured here at an unforgettable dinner at our house a few months ago with the film-maker Ken Russell and many other notable guests. I had the honour (and it really was) of sitting between these wise men for the meal, and enjoying a conversation that leapt from the sadomasochism of Percy Grainger (something I know a little about thanks to my school music teacher - another story for another blog) to elderberry pie, to road planning in the Lake District and many places in between. For once, I shut up and savoured being the audience. Robert knew he had limited time. He had a huge appetite for food, wine and conversation that evening and - as so often at dinners with Robert - the night ended in the small hours, with his wife Pamela, encouraging him out into the darkness to be driven home.

In so many ways Robert was much kinder to the Lake District than it was to him. He never gave up working tirelessly to promote the place's most famous cultural export - Wordsworth - in both the lowest and highest circles. Here was a man who in his seventies, was taking the first train down to London at 5 in the morning, to appear on Breakfast TV listening to some dreadful 6 year olds who who recited 'I wandered lonely as a cloud...', deafeningly, in a circle around him. Every Tuesday, a few hours before one of the Trust's poetry evenings, Robert would personally call you up (knowing, as he did, that I hate poetry - not that that ever came between us) and cajole you into coming to the event. They were always fun, and this typifies Robert's charm and persistance, his belief in his mission and his personal accountability for its success. And yet the Trust's library building (which finally opened this summer) - a cause which ate so much of Robert's energy in the last few years - was a feud with the planners on an epic scale, a needlessly and pointlessly protracted war with a council who should know so very much better.

So, Adam is on the other side of the planet in Japan, when he receives an email with the news. He must cry online.

iPod love - part 2

2005-10-13T21:23:00.000-07:00

I have been doing rather lot of driving on the same stretch of M6 recently and consequently my brain is in overdrive as it disengages with the actual road signeage.
Back to the iPod - I was thinking of the analogy of pot-pourri, but a pot-pourri where each and every distinct scented fragment transports you somewhere absolutely now - the school hymn book, your grandmothers house, your mother's embrace.
One of the compelling but potentially dangerous aspects of the iPod is its capacity to hold literally thousands of pieces of music that have a direct and powerful emotional effect on you - all available (and discard-able) within a millisecond. Think of the music that transports you back to your teenage years, to school or to heartbreak. Think of how rarely most of us encountered that music before. Maybe while screeling through a radio dial in a hired car, or at a friends wedding, and remember how viscerally it affected you.
Like many I am sure, I have filled the little beast with only the creme de la creme of my musical taste, scouring the Web for downloads "christ, Magazine - I haven't hear that since I was 15!") and consequently it's now like a quietly ticking bomb, a genies lamp.
What does the iPod's ability to fast-track us to the most heightened emotional states of our lives do? I find myself on perpetual 'shuffle' mode, gorging on successive memories at 95mph on the motorway, then skipping ruthlessly through the opening bars of dozens of them thinking 'Christ, not Magazine again!'

iPod – the ladies’ friend

2005-10-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

Is iPod - at last – the life-soundtrack every girl’s been waiting for?
I had a CD Walkman for years but could never be arsed complicating my travel arrangements even more by sorting out CDs and batteries before leaving the house. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many women I have seen using a Walkman outside of a gym.
Maybe, just maybe, as I’ve got older I need to block out more of other people. Whatever – I find myself addicted to my sleek lime green friend, nurturing it (him? Her?), feeding it new music at regular intervals, clothing it in a sensible zipup case when not in use (i.e rarely) and even conversing with it during our long car journeys together with Teach Yourself Japanese.
Oh, and because it's autumn you should be mushroom-hunting. Here's a photo of some exquisite chanterelles to get you inspired.

“Vegan Banquet”

2005-10-10T03:00:00.000-07:00

Like ‘friendly fire’, these words feel uncomfortable, even improbable, together.
But, hey, I’m one of the many thirty-somethings who in the past trained themselves to consume ‘milks’ called ‘Rice Dream’ and ‘Soy Delicious’ before finding out that female mice fed on GM soy beans were growing penises. And anyway, putting stuff in your tea that actually curdles on contact makes you start really enjoying the ever-reliable, mechanised consistency of some really unhealthy products like Coke and Big Macs.
When I stayed in New York, imagined mid-life crises around dairy-intolerance became a regular conversation topic at parties. When we left our apartment I had a T shirt made for my landlord / friend – a major exponent of the theory that milk products were killing us all. It said ‘Dairy Happens’, and went down a storm.
Now, this is my blog and I don’t have to be fair - but having ranted against Lake District food here, I really have to haul a recent ‘vegan banquet’ (their words) consumed in London recently, right over the coals. Which, incidentally, might have helped furnish the dishes with that elusive but important culinary feature – flavour.
The cafe was in one of the last central London hippie / squatter enclaves, and so you’re eating in what almost feels like a theme restaurant in this age of bleached laminate-flooring and chrome light fittings. Bizarre throwbacks such as freestyle jazz and allowing smoking compound the retro vibe. You can almost imagine staff being issued with uniforms of ratty dred wigs and piercings behind the kitchen door. Anyway, suffice to say that the tepid mush served us had all the classic vegan attributes – no seasoning, undercooked pulses, overcooked vegetables and a certain holier than thou miserliness – no fresh coriander (they even manage that at the tandoori in Maryport for God’s sake) and certainly nothing as needlessly raunchy as a popadum.

So, if you find yourself mysteriously craving a vegan banquet in central London, take my advice and eat at one of the many fabulous and economical South Indian restaurants behind Euston train station on Drummond Street. You can even wig out completely and order a (dairy-filled) lassi with it.

Ken Russell's legs

2005-09-28T12:08:00.000-07:00

Well that was some weekend.
The Coniston Water Festival came to fruition with a diverse smorgasbord of cultural open sandwiches. My favourite was Ken Russell's Lovely Legs Competition - pictured here in progress (those are my boyfriends legs on show). I have removed Ken's as they were just too good. But seriously, shortly after this pic was taken he declared himself the winner. And shortly before it he had discussed Cumbria's self-proclaimed ' Professor of Adventure', Millican Dalton, an Edwardian cave dweller who developed a line in mountain tours for the bored English bourgoisie.
Find out more about this fascinating nut at www.professor-of-adventure.com
Nowadays of course, Millican would be living off Cumbrian Rural Regeneration grants, completing hundreds of Health & Safety assessments and wearing a hideous fleecy instead of canvas shorts (a garment he claimed to have invented)...

End of the Century

2005-09-02T05:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning I drove past a remote rural bus stop at which stood a middle-aged man wearing a Ramones Tshirt saying 'Too Tough To Die'. Sadly for most of the Ramones this hasn't proved true. When I sayed in New York a few years ago - in the band's native East Village - you could even buy T shirts that said 'Pray for Johnny', who was at that time the only surviving core member.

Coincidentally, over the last few nights I've been watching 'End of the Century', the recent docu feature on the seminal band. It's no great film but it's been nostalgic for me - the first gig I ever went to as a 14 year old (I've just looked it up online and it must have been Sept. 23rd 1984) was the Ramones at the Glasgow Barrowlands. Back then this venue was still the sweat and vomit-pot of legend. I still remember meeting my older brother Mark (pictured here with me recently) afterwards (we had gone seperately - it's not like you take your kid sister to see the Ramones, c'mon), after he's spent the gig inches from the stage. His Tshirt was shredded (a la Incredible Hulk) and he was lager-drenched but euphoric.
I don't remember much about the experience except the speed of the noise, and the profound sense that I was not going to be the same again. I have often heard creative people reminisce about these moments in their teenage years, when they realised (or is it that they decided?) they had turned a corner in their life. One occasion I have heard of was an early Sex Pistols gig (was it at the Royal College of Art or St Martin's?) at which it seems 80% of the audience have gone one to become noteable artists or musicians. I wonder what that power in moment or place is made of?

In the DVD extras (a favourite place of mine as I enjoy extended meandering interviews) not only do we see how profoundly different the band members were (a highlight is Johnny picking up the Hall of Fame award and thanking Bush and America - the audience applaud his irony as they can't believe a rocker is really rightwing) - we also get a sense of how miraculous the bands long career is. Apart from the series of more or less interchangeable drummers, each key member had serious addiction or personality disorders. But somehow - as my boyfriend Adam puts it - a 'concern for trousers' and immaculate 2 minute songs won out.

One beguiling interviewee (now playing guitar in the sky with most of the Ramones) is Joe Strummer (of the Clash), whose acting I also rate in Jim Jarmusch's 'Mystery Train'. He's full of praise for the tightness of the Ramones' live set, their concern for trousers and style generally. In one particularly eloquent passage, he states that 'bands matter so much more than individual artists because they symbolise something important to humankind about the importance of being together, working at something'.

Let them eat cake

2005-07-18T07:19:00.000-07:00

Why is food so shit in the Lake District?
Even assuming the locals never eat out (and why would they) it's supposedly a place dedicated to serving the millions of visitors it fleeces annually with every comfort and stimulation they could hope for. And yet, not only is the food almost invariably crap, its rare as hen's teeth toboot. Countless times have I walked into a cafe at 2pm to be told that lunch is finished, or at 4.30pm to be told that no tea is available as it's dinner time (for who - the under 5's?). As I personally keep most of Ambleside's ethnic restaurants afloat over the darkest winter months with my custom, I can't help but feel like the place could try and meet me half way for the rest of the year.
Last weekend we endured a phenomenally overpriced and pretentious 4 course (obligatory menu type for optimum ripoff)) dinner with Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane, who were up at Grizedale to discuss their greasy pole sculpture for Appleby. There were butter swans (melting rapidly), bucket sized wine glasses, bread rolls stuffed with God knows what, and brusque staff. Luckily the company was entertaining and each new plate was greeted with gasps of amazement by us - I think the staff interpreted this as flattery...

Case Study from Today:
I leave the house having not had time to lunch there due to rigid adherence to new time management self-help book, plus not wanting to get in the cleaners way. I am driving for an hour or so to the 'local' hospital for an X ray, and whilst en route I realise that the only lunch prospect viable is the local supermarket. My car renders any alternative costly and time consuming (you'd be amazed at how scarce and expensive a parking place is up here), but, flirting with the almost alluring mystery of the prospect of a hospital sandwich (would they exist? what fillings would be left by 2.30pm?), I decide to press on until after my appointment by wolfing a banana.
I am early, and so I cruise around Barrow-in-Furness, a hardcore kind of place far from the Lake District's pretensions. There's a chip shop here , doing well at lunch time, but I don't fancy it in the heat. There used to be a great little old-fashioned italian run by an expat Sicilian with that skin condition the Singing Detective on Tv had. Photos of hen nights with his signature banana dessert plastered the walls but you could always face out onto the streets whilst you ate a well-priced and speedy (something you NEVER get in the LD proper) spag bol.
I digress - to cut a long story short, on my way home - famished at 3pm - I remember that a nearby town has a rather chi chi little cafe in which I am certain to be able to eat. Now, I am no hard core ethical consumer, but i feel a little self-satisfied as I decide to opt to support this local entrepreneur instead of the supermarket, I park, I pay, then sit down inside the cafe - the girl emerges "We're just doing soup and cake now" Soup?! And not just soup, celery and stilton - a soup which almost sounds like December. It's 80 degrees outside.
So, you guessed it, I end up in the supermarket, where along with another 40 ors so diners, I enjoy a well-priced and speedy cooked English breakfast - at 3.15pm on a hot July wednesday.

It doesn't get much better

2005-06-05T19:42:00.000-07:00

Me & Nina's film Bata-ville has been accepted for the Edinburgh Film Festival AND broadband has arrived at my mountain top!
A few minutes fiddling with a router and I was almost disappointed to find myself wireless too - such ease. I recall my first ever home dial-up in 1994 I think it was - lines and lines of code I had to type in to a Mac Classic, invariably followed by failure, mysterious error messages, expensive help phonecalls (though at least you were only one of 11 other subscribers) and that endless endless furry modem trill. Actually, I might rather miss that now. Something about the audible frailty is so articulate of the miracle of the Web, especially so when you live as literally remotely as I do.

No puns on the word 'Tate'....

2005-05-15T12:24:00.000-07:00

I have just spent a typically over-stuffed three days in London, ending in an over-stuffed Virgin train carriage en route home to the north sitting next to someone enduring a protracted phone text relationship melt-down with someone called Trevor (not that I was peering over her shoulder, it's just the cramped conditions y'know). Thank God for my iPod - though I sometimes wonder if my total reliance on the 'shuffle' mode implies some kind of fundamentally indecisive nature.....
Nina (Pope) and I are in the final (ish) furlong of the distribution of our film Bata-ville and are limping to the finish line with our graphic designer Re. An ex-student of Nina's, the working relationship - mainly via the enormous and fraught website - has deteriorated to a kind of mute tussle, something akin to the mock-fighting that Nina's two cats engage in whilst we're all round the meeting table at her studio. Like the last bout of any long session in the ring, each party wants out as quickly as possible but with themselves as the winner. The spoils include a DVD cover and film poster which noone has the objectivity or energy to really apply themselves to. We've done so many print design jobs at this low-level stage in the last throes of an epic project, and they rarely meet one's aspirations - but how to avoid this pattern eludes us. Answers on a postcard welcome.
Before Re even arrived we had 6 hours of high-level life coaching with our assistant Jane, a woman so awesome that the title doesn't fit. A day of her time spans business strategy, mailing list additions and washing up.
Today was spent outside the studio after yesterdays 13 hour day - Bata-ville was one of three arts and regeneration case studies in 'Tracing Change', a symposium at Tate Britain. It was a pretty small event with an invited audience made up of many artists we were familiar with, some stakeholders from local authorities and other interested arts-folk. Unusually for us, Nina and I managed not to take the podium, instead of relying on our EPK (Electronic Press Kit) for the film, featuring a shockingly badly filmed interview with us about the project which we played frm DVD to the audience. David Cross (of artists Cornford & Cross) chaired the day with the authority of a better-dressed Paxman - this man is the natural successor to the increasingly flabby Mat Collings, surely.
Anyway, the event included a roleplaying workshop where I played a commissioner, the enterprise was flawed by my detailed knowledge of the field from my own activities and my boyfriend's (director of Grizedale Arts). However, I enjoy any activity using post-it notes and felt tip pens and ended up the spokesperson of the group. That might have been because I was wearing the brightest clothing. Hierarchies work in mysterious ways.
Pleasant though it was, 10 - 4 is too short an event for both the theme under discussion and for the projects presented and as it ended a handful of really interesting comments hovered in the air only to dissipate on the way out. Over lunch I met an ex-student of mine from way back in my first year of teaching, at UCE - Gavin McWilliam, who had been one of those over-talented but delicate young men whose idealism is dented fundamentally by the introspection of art school and its often puerile debates. I both recognised him and recalled his name, testament to the fact he was one of my first students and formed part of a (I now see) unique cluster of idealistic and engaged students whose group tutorials never ended on time, so vigorous was the debate. At the time, I was too inexperienced to realise that every group tutorial since would seem comparitively like a Teenager's Bible Group . It was genuinely thrilling to hear that after some years in design he was finishing a landscape architecture course and sounded like he's really found his passion. It's rare to encounter students so long after your interaction with them and even rarer to be able to remember anything about why you ever cared about them - so this was a much-needed antidote to the woes of my current academic role wrestling bureaucracy.
Before the train I met an old friend and ex-boyfriend who I have kept up with, perhaps because in the years following our break-up we attended an (accidentally) cathartic fencing class together every Thursday night. His wife is expecting their first child and - something of a comedian - David has been disrupting the antenatal group's 'breakaway' workshops. When asked to complete the sentance, 'The pain of childbirth is....", he added - to very little acclaim amongst the mothers to be - "a feminist lie?".

Should Hello Kitty-ites have driving licences?

2005-04-06T15:31:00.000-07:00

(From home)No real symptoms of jetlag apart from taking the house phone in my luggage to London....bizarre. We travelled for nearly 22 hours home from Tokyo to our mountain-top which helped give sufficient space between Fuji-san and here.

Our time in North japan had us in Aomori - at an austerely beautful new gallery and residency in the 'burbs of this anonymous-looking (think Seattle / Wolverhampton with signs you can't read) big town - its by a famous archtect - Ando (?!) and mercifully the old Grizedale-inspired sculpture park was obscured by 2 metres of snow. Fighting back the temptation to gloss over the new direction he's led, Adam then charmed the director and his 5 curators. Unfortunately the director spoke English - unfortunate as his accent was so strong and it would have been impossibly rude to interrupt and insist on Japanese & translation. Anyway, we got him giggling (this is big in japan) and left with invites to return. try stopping us after seeing the palatial residency base (including the largest etching press I have ever seen - and due to my past life as a printmaker I have seen a few). This was one of the very few formal meetings that didn't start or end in a delicious if complex meal usually including at least two unidentifiable seafoods, bowing and chopstick anxiety.
During our stay in Iwate our host Kate told me one of her initial reasons for her initial reluctance to learn japanese was that 90 percent of the conversations are about food - what better reason for me to start?! Occasionally though even I am stumped as to what the fuss is about - in hakone at the trip's start, we took a major detour to an ancient noodle-artesan's restaurant (they were so serious they even had books published showing the family generations up to their elbows in dough against a backdrop of paper screens and volcanoes). The actual noodles' specialness eluded me, pleasant though they were - though of course I didn't let on to anyone, and tried hard to overcome decades of anti-slurp programming a la japanese.

The last weekend was spent mainly in the city after a frighteningly expensive bullet train (even considering the wow factor of seats that turn 360 degrees and silent child passengers) from Iwate - a small rural town with the equivalent of Birmingham New Street station expensively constructed in its midst. Apparently its quite common - for political reasons - for massive construction projects to appear all over Japan regardless of demand- hence Tokyo Bay off the shores - and (discuss?!) perhaps even the Hello Kitty theme park.

We attended the most bizarre degree show I have ever seen (see pic) which was held in Aida (spelling?!) a major japanese artist's - house in the burbs. Various students had taken over (ie nearly destroyed) his family home (is this what all 'private' art schools do in Japan?!) and one wandered around stumbling on the work. My fave was a guy living on the balcony and brewing sake (see pic) - made me think of grame Rogers whiskey still at the grizedale show a few years back. Unlike then, I turned down his offer of a slurp - it wasn't too hard to gesture "There's no way I am drinking that unfiltered rice vomit, but thanks so much"

One thing the japanese can't control is those bloody cherry tree blossoms - the entire city has been on tenterhooks for weeks since the cold winter - there's even signposts for them in the subways. And yet those darn trees aren't playing ball this year. Always pragmatic about both leisure and nature, the locals - having planned their spring holidays around the obligatory piss-up under the trees - turned up in their droves anyway on Saturday. Shinjuku-gyoen park looked like a neat and unnervingly quiet (the japanese even hold their hands over their mouths when they're on their mobiles) Glastonbury by lunchtime despite their being around 3 reluctant trees out of 600 in bloom. There's a strict code of conduct usually based on blue tarpaulins as space - holders (could this take off amongst Lake District's greedy visitors?) - the office underlings take turn to sit alone on the tarpaulin until the rest if the salarymen turn up with the beer and bento boxes.
Adam and I - sans tarpaulin but with bento - stretched out near what turned out to be the gay blossom party - a cluster of nicely-turned out and comparitively rowdy (goodness, I could hear them from 5 feet away) fellows. We are on the look out for my friend John Miller's Japanese flamenco club but their under-blossom party had been cancelled as rain had been (erroneously) forecast.

We also visited Kiddy-land, a fab shop organised on floors by character names - eg Hello Kitty, Wallace & Gromit, Mickey Mouse, Big Bird - Level 1. We joined a few western tourists and hordes of groovy japanese schoolgirls squealing at every turn - an entire display was dedicated to Hello Kitty ephemera specifically for your car interior - I mean, should Kitty-ites have driving licences?

It's lambing season here too

2005-04-01T10:30:00.002-08:00

Yesterday was mostly spent at the Koiwai Farm near here in Iwate - a kind of real farm meets tourist attraction that appears to successfully balance production of dairy products (though est. 1891, these stil have a kind of cachet here in japan - e.g people give butter as a special gift) with a very popular visitor attraction complete with the hand-rearing of lambs. All the livestock we saw were experiencing a kind of 5 star accommodation that would have their UK counterparts voluntarily making their way to the slaughterhouse - fresh sweetsmelling hay, futuristic polytunnels (v popular here due to typhoons etc) and adoring Japanese schoolchildren. Though the whole enterprise had a whiff of the old Grizedale Centre about it, it was a fair number of notches up in quality - from the gift shops to the food options - the latter being a kind of indoor barbecue where you cook your own food on a brazier. Very funky was a series of snow 'igloos' they use all winter for families to have barbecues in the grounds - a massive success that I can imagine we could import but using leaves and branches instead of snow. The snow rests on a metal support that is removed for summer - it's a great example of the Japanese love for a kind of expedient and easily consumed 'natural' experience.
The night before Adam and I delivered our talk at the Iwate Museum of Art, very well-recieved despite the challenges of translation. If in doubt say 'peter rabbit' and all the japanese laugh and nod.

At Kata and Kate's where we're staying, their daughter Emily (see below) demonstrated her Kendo to us and I compared the abject polyester European fencing kit I have, to this majestic get-up.

Glamour & snow

2005-03-30T22:39:00.000-08:00

The opening of 2 big shows at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo showed us that some things are the same wherever in the world you are! Except the previews ended with the serving of Japanese whiskey (darker and sweeter than Scotch) and started with lengthy translated speeches of thanks. It was nice to meet the incredible array of expats at the preview - from collagen-enhanced Italian publishers, to an Aussie art journalist who told me that Tapies was a ' really interesting young spanish artist'.
As at home a large unruly crowd of us made our way to an Indian restaurant having drunk to much, and I sat next to a curator called Ong Keng Sen who was fresh from a project at the ICA in London. The naan was good but the rice - being traditional Japanese - was slightly odd.

http://www.mori.art.museum/html/eng/index.html

Yesterday was spent travelling to Sendai with our hosts Kate and Kata - including more delicious sushi and a visit to an inspiring futuristic 'mediatheque' incl. library and gallery - and then to iwate where they live. Driving snow greeted us!

International & intergalactic harmony

2005-03-26T23:31:00.000-08:00

Since returning to Tokyo I have got rid of my jetlag and several hundred pounds – the latter in ‘Big Camera’, a massive strip-lit technology store that - despite its equally massive savings – came close to my idea of hell.
Yesterday was spent mainly at AIT (art initative tokyo) with a group of San Francisco CCA curatorial students who had been in the city a week with Kate Smith – a curator who used to work in the UK. They introduced a whole load of Californian artists and then the day broadened to include a very diverse group of ‘others’ and that included me. Each speaker had just 5 minutes – signalled by a crowing alarm clock – to present their work, so it was pretty dynamic! Of interest – in extreme brief - were:
ACC (Autonomous cultural centre) – Weimar / Germany
Peter Bellers – Uk artist based in Tokyo –& Command N project
Makimato Masato – Akhibara TV – use of all the front window TVs in stores in city’s electronics district
The Common Room, Indonesia

We also hooked up with expat Kate Fowler & her Japanese husband who will accompany us to Iwate for most of next week and are incredibly helpful networkers. Today too much time was spent at the Mori Centre (built by uncle of japanese uber artist Mariko Mori – not starving in a garret there then) where the big cahuna art centre is, director is from the UK – Peter Elliott. It appears to be within a Dubai-style shopping mall but the shops are dull and scattered throughout in a random way – the highlight was the garden where some fish that appear to be related to one that went into space (?!) on one of the shuttles – have been deposited into the pond as an act of intergalactic harmony (very important to the japanese).

The day ended at Haranjuku, which to align with Camden Market in London would be a little unfair but it is comparable in crowds and average age.
BUT instead of an overall goth-theme (though it appears) there’s a pink lolita theme and the streets include yet more megoliths of consumerism – our favourite (obviously) was called The Forest, where Adam happily had his photo taken with a glamourous transvestite.
Other highlights included:
The puppy shop – very sad very small dogs in striplit capsules – average price £600
A fancy dress shop for pets – in the window a bee costume for small dogs
Personal ashtrays which smokers use here - a kind of portable metal envelope for your ash
Some very lovely kimono wearers – I am a convert

Mountain air that smells of eggs

2005-03-24T23:06:00.000-08:00

I have been unable to exceed five hours of nocturnal sleep since arriving in Japan but have high hopes for tonight based on my recent consumption of a washing up bowl of soporific ramen noodles.

But I did want to blog before bed-time as so much has happened. Adam and I are just back from Hakone, 90 minutes on the ‘romance train’ (a species of bullet train) from Tokyo. It’s a place billed as ‘no must sees’ in the guidebooks and therefore a must-see for Adam and I, jaded from our years if living in ‘the most beautiful part of England.tm’. Hakone is famed for its hot springs, which I’ll cover later, and appears to be a rather charming ‘something for everyone’ kind of tourist resort – we’re talking a Begonia Museum - clinging onto various mountainous precipices and even in mid-week March, popular. It’s the home of the Hakone Open Air Museum, an old skool sculpture park, whose former director Adam had charmed in the Grizedale drizzle a few years back. The old school tie network of international sculpture parks meant that Mr Matsimura and Mrs Noda – whose park is funded by the Fuji empire – were happy to return the favour many times over, and we spent today with them sampling the incredible density of amusements on offer - from eggs cooked in the sulphurous steam of the local volcano (eggy smell / ergo eat eggs – what’s that about?!) - to a clotted cream tea at the colonial Fuyima Hotel, a Shinto shrine plus – in the inclusive Japanese spirit - a Buddha carved into a rockface.

We were very generously accomodated in the Park’s own club, a rather classy late 60’s affair, very stylish despite the bizarre Japanese versions of mid-century European art. Vast windows looked out onto exquisite Hokusai-esque forests, and closer the the building were tiny courtyards of traditional Japanese plantings – including the seasonal cherry trees. I squeezed in 2 traditional Japanese baths – one reluctantly this morning at 5 due to jetlag – and one last night. In both I was alone, though they are usually communal experiences where you wash first and then join the deep, wood and stone bath for a very very hot soak. In Hakone these baths are heated naturally by the hot springs, and a water level window looks onto an exquisite private courtyard. It was sublime and I am now wondering if I could fit one in at home.
Perhaps the most exciting thing was the dining, which took place in an epic room with very groovy 60’s carpeting, James Bond-esque picture windows, and a soundtrack of late 50’s Western pop.
On arrival for dinner our places were already set with a seasonal array of incredible creations – probably 15 separate dishes – and this was only one half of what was to follow in a succession of pots, dishes and trays. The artfulness is almost impossible to describe and each flavour was distinct, some fragrant and moist, some austere. Our hosts seemed genuinely delighted at our enthusiasm for the food, more so at breakfast when we devoured a traditional Japanese breakfast of rice, pickles and fish to the strains of the Everley Brothers and polite smalltalk about driving in England (actually that’s a crap description as noone can ‘devour’ such delicate foo, at least not with my chopstick skills). After dinner we retired to chat in a traditional tatame room, which save for the passive smoking and my jetlag, was a very enjoyable chance to talk cats with our host (he had a persian that looked like Catherine Deneuve and we discussed how to prevent them from ruining the tatame) and witness the endearing giggliness and natural warmth of the Japanese.

The Museum itself is located against a breathtaking natural backdrop, but is dominated by vast works by generally obscure 20th century sculptors. I found myself more interested in the tree-training structures all over the garden. The collection is still growing under Fuji’s patronage but the impression is of a tourist experience rather than an art one. However, this isn’t to denigrate it, as it as fascinating to visit not only the park but the other cultural sights locally with Mr Matsimura and Mrs Yoda – and to witness an attitude to cultural consumption so different from our own – one perhaps of a kind of casualness – which at its worst, in the UK, we see as camera snapping hordes of Japanese tour groups – but in fact one can interpret as consumerism akin to any other practiced here.

Well, it's a start

2005-03-18T12:43:00.000-08:00

Let's start a great British blog with a weather report:
Though visability from my mountain-top home has been zero for the last 4 days, I managed to spot the first daffodil in bloom this year in my garden - as I reversed out of my drive at typical break neck speed to start the first leg of my journey to Japan via St Martin's in Lancaster where I teach.

Here at college things are busy - I'm remembering why I don't generally do holidays. It's so much easier just to keep working than to explain to students over and over that no, they can't expect feedback on their dissertation draft 27 whilst you are on the shinkansen to Kyoto next week - 'Please see Oxford English Dictionary' for definition of 'holiday'.
On the plus side, I have set up some good meetings to drive forward lots of iniatives at the start of next term - Kate Brundrett, the coordinator or the Cumbria Artist's Network - is coming to talk about the Fred arts festival in October this year - and if / how we can get our spanking new gallery here on campus involved. Also keeping up with the 'Business and Community Enterprise Unit' here, which seems to be one of the few areas of College with funding which just might be useful in getting a gallery programme of the ground. Also have secured two young artists - Jonathan Griffin and Oliver Lamb - to come to talk to and (I hope) inspire our 3rd yr art students about life after art school. So few of the art students here have any aspirations to make a career out of what they're studying, it's tragic. Both Jonathan and Oliver are still making work despite being in unsteady economic circumstances - so I am hoping that they will be both realistic and motivational.

Jez (the other half of the embryonic -i.e still recruiting - BA New Media Arts programme here (see www.ucsm.ac.uk/cme/) and I are supposed to be generating stage 2 of the afore-mentioned website over the next month, but we keep getting swamped by more urgent-feeling stuff - ergo I feel very chuffed with getting this blog going - a small step in the right direction....